unlikely friendship

You might imagine that after a month of cold bucket showers and sharing my living space with all kinds of creatures – this week alone, I have encountered snakes, lizards, cockroaches, giant millipedes, spiders, and a stray dog, whom we affectionately call, “Rabies” – I might be a little homesick. In spite of these conditions, however, there is no material object or luxury that I truly miss. Understanding the lives of the individuals around me has something to do with it, but merely understanding is not quite enough. The realization that I was born into a better situation because of luck, and not entitlement, is what really changed my perspective on what is important.

While I lay in bed lethargic from my first bout of food poisoning yesterday afternoon, I chatted with the cleaning lady as she swept the floor beneath me. (Because I can fluently speak Kannada, the local language, my experience at Shanti Bhavan has been different from the other volunteers: I have been able to befriend many of the cleaning maids, kitchen staff, aunties, and Raju, our driver). Manjula is 25 years old with two children, ages eleven and seven. After completing 8^thgrade, she was taken out of school and married. Years later, her husband left her and the young ones for another woman, with whom he had previously had a secret marriage and family. In January, her father passed, leaving her as the sole bread winner for her children and sick mother. Only recently trekking a daily one-mile commute to Shanti Bhavan, Manjula has spent her entire life in the same village. Hers is but a common fate among females in rural India.

Visitors from the developed world often view women like Manjula with empathy and feel grateful for their own circumstances. I find that it is only when you consciously cease separating “them,” and “us,” however, that you begin to actually identify with the less fortunate. My life thus far has been vastly different from Manjula’s and I cannot directly relate with her story; at the same time, I also cannot see her as someone completely foreign, and unlike myself. Like the students at Shanti Bhavan, I was brought into an entirely different life from that of my parents, and given the hope of a very optimistic future from an early age. Yes, I am grateful to be a girl from America who was born into better prospects than Manjula. But I am more grateful to be a girl from America who is able to witness the culture from which she came – and build a friendship with someone whom I might not have otherwise known.